Minister, Unity Spiritual Center Pflugerville
I remember sitting in the church of my childhood trying to make sense of what I was hearing. It was difficult for me to understand that a loving merciful God would let you burn in hell if for some reason you had not heard of or embraced His son as your savior.
Of course the church I was raised in was what we would call today, a fundamentalist evangelical church. My family embraced these doctrinal beliefs so I experienced the whole gamut of Sunday school, Sunday church service, Wednesday night prayer service, and daily home devotions. I was even sent off to summer Bible camp for several summers.
Now, don’t get me wrong, my parents were loving, nurturing adults that were only following what they thought was the best path for raising an inquisitive young boy in the correct way.
All through my childhood days and then into teen age years and on into young adult years this confusion continued. Although I stayed in the church, mostly to keep my family happy, this nagging question continued: “how can a God of love and mercy condemn his children to burn in hell for any reason?” Other questions began to surface. Things like: “how can there be only one way or path?” “What is sin and what makes it so important?” “What makes me guilty?” “How come somebody does well and somebody else doesn’t?” “What makes it difficult for science and religion to agree” and on and on.
The ideas I heard for the first time on that cassette opened me up to some of the answers I had been looking for years. This experience began my life long search for practical strategies that could make life work for me and my family.
I soon realized the answers I was searching for did not exist in the philosophical environment that I was raised in. There had to be more and there had to be some answers to my questions that would make sense. As I began searching, I became aware of the idea of conditioning. We accept beliefs because we grow up with them and never even question whether they are true for us or not. Sort of like Christopher Columbus setting off to sail around the world when everyone knew the world was flat and he was a fool who would just sail off the world as everyone knew it.
During all this time, I graduated from college, completed a two year tour of duty in the United States Navy reserve on a ship out of Norfolk, Va., took a job with a firm in the Philadelphia, Pa. area and finally met and in 1969 married the love of my life, Madelyn.
Madelyn and I raised two daughters and moved from the Philadelphia area to Orlando, Florida, and then on to Jacksonville, Florida and then to Montgomery, Alabama as I rose through the corporate structure and changed companies to finally reach the position of general manager of a five state division of a midsize company. By this time, still asking the same questions about life, without answers I became pretty much what I call a friendly agnostic. In other words, I didn’t know if God existed and it really didn’t matter to me at that point.
In Montgomery, Alabama, Madelyn and I were introduced to our first marketing company and the ideas they taught about positive thinking, goal setting, and living life from a purpose driven strategy. I can still remember riding in a car from Montgomery to Mobile, Alabama to attend a meeting. My associate at that time played a cassette tape in the car as we drove of Dr. Catherine Ponder, a prosperity teacher. The ideas I heard for the first time on that cassette opened me up to some of the answers I had been looking for years. This experience began my life long search for practical strategies that could make life work for me and my family.
Shortly after this life changing event, my wonderful job in the corporate world as General Manager of a five state area came to an end. The company I was working for was sold to another entity and my role as General Manager was merged with another position in the acquiring company and I was given a “Golden Parachute” or terminated nicely with a three month salary guarantee.
What a shock. Life changed dramatically for us. We moved to Mobile, Alabama, and then Atlanta, Georgia, and then on to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and then to Plano, Texas. We also spent some time in Spokane, Washington and then moved back to Orlando, Florida. All of these moves were basically looking for the Gold at the end of the rainbow. We had varying degrees of success and failure in each location and made the move to the next location when things didn’t work out as we expected.
During all of this time I kept expanding my study of what I now understood as a Spiritual awareness in life. I finally realized that my childhood understanding of God and the mysteries of the Universe were conditioned into my psyche from a perspective of religion which came from man made doctrine. From study, prayer and meditation I began to realize that there is a higher awareness that we can know from our own inner self. That higher awareness is available to us now in our everyday life and not just in the sweet by and by.
One of the things that helped me the most in my new awareness was finding a more realistic translation of the Holy Bible. This new translation helped me with a better understanding of what Jesus was really teaching us. What I didn’t know was that Jesus and his followers grew up in an area of the world that spoke Aramaic as their everyday language. Aramaic is an ancient language that predates Hebrew, Greek, Latin and other languages in the Holy Land.
It is still spoken in its original form in three or four isolated tribal areas in the mountains of Turkey. It is a rich language full of metaphors and idioms that must be also used in translations to bring forth the original meanings of the words. Evidently, the translators of the King James version of the original English Bible were not aware of the nuances from the original Aramaic language and used the verbatim meanings of the words (during the 14th and 15th centuries) instead of the actual meanings from the idioms that Jesus used in his every day conversations using the language that was spoken at the time. Just to give you an example of a current idiom, can you imagine someone translating “I am hot under the collar” or “I am in a pickle” or “I am behind the eight ball” 2000 years from now and giving it the proper understanding.
The first use of an idiom from that time totally reframed my understanding of Christian teachings. The phrase “ye must be born again” was an idiom meaning “you must change your thinking” or “you must change the way you look at things” or “you must look at this from a Spiritual focus and not a physical focus”.
To compound these translation idiosyncrasies, the scripture we read today was translated by groups of translators (in the 15th century) from the Latin translations which were translated from Greek translations which were translations of what was spoken in Aramaic. How amazing is it that what we read today is exactly what Jesus was telling us about life 2,000 years ago. What I finally realized was, that scholars and theologians made up stories to fit the words as they saw them and understood them and then created a Doctrine to fit those beliefs. And here we are today, using somebody’s personal interpretation of words used 2,000 years ago as absolute fact because it has been repeated over and over again until it has become an unchallenged part of our very day life in our Christian culture.
My first reaction to these translation questions was: well why don’t we see if there is a translation from the original Aramaic language which would help us clarify the meanings in Jesus’ words? What I found was outstanding. There was a man, Dr. George Llamsa, who grew up in one of the isolated tribes that still spoke the original Aramaic. Dr. Llamsa worked his way through the education system and eventually graduated with his PhD from Oxford University in England.
He then set out to translate the Holy Bible from the Peshitta texts (Aramaic) and integrate this translation with the King James Version. Dr. Llamsa either changed the original translation to get closer to the original meaning of the text or he used footnotes to clarify the actual meaning from Aramaic. This translation is available today and is known as the Llamsa Translation of the Bible. Since these translation foibles have become more public, there are now other researchers that have studied Aramaic and are bringing their findings into print and even audio recordings of how the sayings of Jesus would have sounded in this original language.
Needless to say, this new translation helped me put together a different picture of what Jesus was telling folks 2,000 years ago. The first use of an idiom from that time totally reframed my understanding of Christian teachings. The phrase “ye must be born again” was an idiom meaning “you must change your thinking” or “you must change the way you look at things” or “you must look at this from a Spiritual focus and not a physical focus”.
The phrase “in my name” meant, “Do things as I have told you to do them” or “do what you have been trained to do”. It had no mystical meaning in the actual name of Jesus as so many people believe today.
Another door opened up my understanding of prayer and how to establish a real connection with the Spiritual realm I was now looking for. My religious training had so deeply ingrained the idea that heaven was a place to look for after death that it took me quite awhile to see the truth clearly stated in scripture. Luke 17:21 says “the Kingdom of Heaven is within you”. I am still opening up to the idea that within me is the direct connection to Spirit and that is what Jesus was teaching his followers 2000 years ago. So now I understand that within me and you is that place that we can commune with God. We just have to know how to make that connection.
During all this time, my search took me on many paths. I studied the writings of Parmahansa Yogananda and learned to meditate and chant, I read the books of Joel Goldsmith and his interpretation of Jesus’ teachings and how he became a famous healer and showed people how to apply the principles of Christianity in a practical way. I also spent time researching the Hermetic and Egyptian wisdom of the ancient philosophies.
I took courses in Neural Linguistic Programming (NLP) and learned about the mind and how the subconscious is really the part of us that runs our life. My study of NLP lead me to certification as a Master NLP Practitioner. I also studied Reiki healing methods and became a Reiki Master in the process.
I am still opening up to the idea that within me is the direct connection to Spirit and that is what Jesus was teaching his followers 2000 years ago. So now I understand that within me and you is that place that we can commune with God.
The story continues, because during this time of search and study, I was a contract speaker with several organizations doing one day seminars on subjects such as goal setting, management skills, strategic planning, and communication skills to the corporate, government and non-profit communities throughout the USA and internationally. I was on the road three to four days a week for several years while my wonderful wife, Madelyn raised our daughters and kept the home fires burning well. During this time I was blessed to have spoken in every state in the USA and most English speaking countries of the world including Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. This exposure to many different cultures and ideas of the world also enhanced my search for the Spiritual answers I was looking for.
In 1988, after three years of formal study with Rev. Arthur Ingalls PhD. In Dallas, Texas at Flow of the Spirit Church, I was ordained as a minister. This education exposed me to the Bible interpretation that I spoke of earlier and the deep understanding of the teachings of our Master Teacher, Jesus the Christ. In spring of 1999, I moved to the main buildings of Flow of the Spirit church in Van Alstyne, Texas and took over as full time minister.
Since moving my self and family to the rural area of Van Alstyne, Texas, I have acted as minister, maintained my contract speaking career for awhile and continued my education process in Spiritual matters. I also had the opportunity to put my spiritual healing education to practical use by overcoming a stroke and healing colorectal cancer along the way.
In 2014, after 15 years in North Texas learning more about the teachings of Jesus and spending time in prayer and meditation, I accepted a position as minister in an Austin, Texas church that has the same spiritual out look on life that I do. From there I moved to become the minster at the Unity Spiritual Center of Pflugervillel, A spiritual out look that creates actual, practical outcomes in life by applying the principles taught by Jesus in a simple, straight forward language 2000 years ago. I am now led by Spirit to share those ideas with a larger audience using the internet to find likeminded people. People like me that are questioning and knowing there is more to life. They know the answers they are getting from folks around them do not ring with the truth they are hearing in their hearts.
The answers lie in a journey that might take some time to assimilate. It will also require some adjustment to your thinking along the way. Jesus says in Mt. 7:6 “do not cast your pearls before swine” which was an idiom of the time meaning “do not try to explain your ideas to fools”. However, I have found that people know what is true in their hearts when they hear it. In my case, it took awhile and the first step was difficult.